Review Blog

Mar 06 2014

Life in half a second: How to achieve success before it is too late by Matthew Michalewicz

Hybrid Publisher, 2013. ISBN 9781925000207.
Described as 'Truthful and hard hitting' this book is an exhaustive
(and exhausting) look at the ingredients of success. It is sold as
the product of 'thousands of studies and decades of research'. Yet
it all seems so familiar and reminds me of being introduced to Dale
Carnegie by a young teacher when I myself was in Year seven.
There is no doubt that Matthew
Michalewicz is on a mission to help young people understand
that they have to make choices and how to go ahead and plan for
their success. He breaks down the book nicely into the five doors of
success bookended by the countdown and waking up.
His main premise is that life is short and that if you want to
achieve your goals you must plan how to achieve them by breaking
down the components that are necessary for success. I like the fact
that he encourages young people to realise that the first step
necessary is to define their goals.
Each chapter finishes with a summary of the actions required in
order to see through the vision. These breakdowns are useful and
reinforce the ideas presented. While the book is ostensibly about
how to achieve life success, I feel that there is much useful advice
in how to break down any concepts into achievable chunks. This makes
it useful to students whose goal may well be to be a better student
and to learn concepts of study and note taking.
While I may quibble about how the author defines and measure success
in what seems to me to be very material terms I feel that he has
written a very useful book for young people which does not talk down
to them. Having taught in Boys' schools I know that there is a
demand for this type of material. I do believe that my colleagues,
the school counsellor and the careers teacher would be very happy
for this book to join the collection.
Michael Jorgen